YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: After more than a decade in a series of multimillion dollar tract homes of the semi-Mediterranean persuasion — three of them in the same swank if one-noted Bel Air development where Kim Kardashian and Kanye West are currently customizing their own 10,000-plus square foot mock-Med macmansion, extensively tatted rock star (and plane crash survivor) Travis Barker went out and spent exactly $4 million on a boxy, newly constructed contemporary on a slightly elevated, .21-acre corner property in the leafy, affluent and centrally located but little-lauded Cheviot Hills ‘hood just south of L.A.’s Century City.

Not exactly a hotbed of celebrity-owned homes, the well-tended Cheviot Hills nabe isn’t without a number of notable residents and properties. Five times married singer/actress Michelle Phillips of The Mamas & the Papas and “Knots Landing” has owned a Cheviot Hills house since at least the late 1990s and, until he started buying condos and homes of his own, Jonah Hill shacked up with his parents in their Cheviot Hills home. The Dunleer Drive house used for exterior shots of the Dunphy family residence on “Modern Family” came up for sale in March (2014) for $2.35 million and quickly sold for $2.15 million to a couple of not-famous fellas and, until he passed in 2012, sci-fi writer extraordinaire Ray Bradbury lived for half a century in a 1930’s split level bungalow on Cheviot Drive that sold in late June (2014) for $1.765 million, a sizable $270,000 more than the $1.495 million asking price. The buyer? None other than Pritzker Prize winning avant garde architect Thom Mayne of Morphosis, according to property records. But we digress…

The muscularly modern house in question — about 4,000 square feet on two floors with four bedrooms and four full bathrooms — has a generous entry with faux bois porcelain tiles under foot and reclaimed wood cladding on the ceiling. The lofty and light-flooded, open-concept living space includes a living room with 13-foot ceilings and 10-foot tall glass sliders. The ceilings drop to a still head-roomy 10-feet over the adjoining dining area that opens to clean lined kitchen outfitted with hardware-free cabinetry topped with snow white solid surface counter tops. The marble backsplash extends dramatically not to mention expensively all the way to the ceiling that, like in the front entrance and the leg well of the four/eight-seat snack counter, is sheathed in rustic reclaimed wood slats.

Unquestionably — at least as far as this property gossip sees it — the residence’s architectural pièce de résistance is the super-sized center island that appears to pass right through a full wall of floor-to-ceiling glass and extend deep in to an outdoor living space underneath a skillfully cantilevered section of the upper floor. The glass wall retracts and disappears in to the walls and when open, quite simply, does away with any division between what’s inside and what’s, technically, outside. Digital marketing materials show the lower level is completed by an office with in built-in desk and separate entrance an over-sized laundry/mud room with tiled walls and built-in cabinetry.

An outdoor loggia and media lounge/study on the second floor separate the three guest/family bedrooms — one with private en suite facility and two that share a wildly-tiled Jack ‘n’ Jill bathroom — from the master suite that encompasses not just one or two but three walk-in closets and a roomy bathroom with finely crafted walnut cabinetry.

The saltwater swimming pool may be barely bigger than a plunge pool but it is, we’re delighted to report, solar heated. The lounge area just off the kitchen has an outdoor fireplace and television and, just around the corner and also under the cantilevered overhang, a dining area with built-in banquette and a not-particularly private outdoor shower space.

Your Mama’s thorough and unscientific research shows Mister Barker maintains a fairly plump portfolio of residential properties in southern California, some of which may (or may not) be occupied by family members, friends and/or staff. They include the 9,253-square-foot mock-Med manse in Calabasas’s guard-gated and celebrity approved Oaks enclave that he and his occasionally volatile ex-wife Shanna Moakler bought in 2007 for $9.5 million. In 2010, after he and Miz Moakler split for good, the entrepreneurial drummer and producer paid $1.465 million for a 2,960-square-foot residence in the guard-gated Bel Air Crest development that — as it turns out, children — is currently available for lease at $10,000 per month. There’s also a roomy and well-equipped if perfectly ordinary five bedroom stone and stucco tract house in Rancho Cucamonga that he picked up in March 2010 for $1.3 million as well as another mock-Med tract house in Lake Elsinore acquired in August 2004 for $480,000 and, finally, another woefully ordinary 2,649-square-foot mock-Med in an undistinguished development in Riverside that he scooped up in February 2008 for $370,000.

An attempted homage to the International Style that sadly falls flat; my love affair with the wood ceilings ended tragically about ten slides in.

Most of the furniture is spot on and compliments the architecture well, but the wallpapers are just so wrong on so many levels; but overall the composition is streets ahead of the house that previously stood here.